Cooperative play on a multiplayer game? Players actually working together
towards a common goal rather than mindlessly slaughtering every player that gets
in their way? The heck, you say! Though this all seems almost too odd to be true,
Westwood Studios has just released a multiplayer
addition to their recent hit, Nox.
And yea, there is no deathmatch to be found. Surely a rare find, indeed.

Nox Quest, as the add-on is being called, allows up to six players to fight
through randomly generated interconnected maps. The goal is simple: fight until you
drop. When the party runs out of lives, the game ends. This is obviously a score-driven
game. The players will not be able to attack one another and instead will have to
resort to cooperating with each other if they want to live. In an obvious nod to the
classic Gauntlet series of games, the monsters appear in never-ending waves
streaming from obelisks. The monsters won't stop until these summoning obelisks are
destroyed. Furthermore, the farther along the party gets, the harder the enemies get.
Finally, characters start and remain at the tenth level of experience, but they begin
with weak inventory items. The solution? Get stronger items by playing through the
game.

Of course, Nox players will note
that Nox is no newcomer to
multiplayer gaming. It even shipped with multiplayer capabilities right out of the
box. However, those capabilities were limited to competitive games rather than
offering cooperative gameplay. Also, the maps in Nox Quest are larger than
those featured in Nox and are
comparable to the maps in the Nox
single-player game.

All this is well and good, but where is this add-on available? This is the easy part:
simply go to Westwood's website and download it.
Be warned: it is 26 megs so it may take a bit of time for those without the benefit of
a broadband connection. And the best part of all this is that Nox Quest is free
of charge. Of course, one must own the full version of Nox
in order to play the add-on. The add-on is currently available in English, German,
French, Japanese, Italian, and Korean languages. For the benefit of RPGamer's English-
speaking readers, this link
is a direct download of the Nox Quest from Westwood's
FTP server. After downloading, copy the file into your Nox
directory. As one last note, those who have Nox Quest will not be able
to chat with players who do not yet have the add-on.

Westwood has set a fine example for the industry
to follow. Does it get any better than free add-ons? If you happen to own Nox,
there is no excuse to not download Nox Quest. So what are you waiting for? Be off
with you, and don't forget to check back with RPGamer for more Nox-related
news.